Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33629367›Full record

ArticleStatistics in medicine2021

Selecting the model for multiple imputation of missing data: Just use an IC!

Firouzeh Noghrehchi, Jakub Stoklosa, Spiridon Penev, David I Warton

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Statistics in medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
35citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

35 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Observational
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Firouzeh NoghrehchiDiscipline of Biomedical Informatics and Digital Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Jakub StoklosaSchool of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Spiridon PenevSchool of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
David I WartonSchool of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Multiple imputation and maximum likelihood estimation (via the expectation-maximization algorithm) are two well-known methods readily used for analyzing data with missing values. While these two methods are often considered as being distinct from one another, multiple imputation (when using improper imputation) is actually equivalent to a stochastic expectation-maximization approximation to the likelihood. In this article, we exploit this key result to show that familiar likelihood-based approaches to model selection, such as Akaike's information criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian information criterion (BIC), can be used to choose the imputation model that best fits the observed data. Poor choice of imputation model is known to bias inference, and while sensitivity analysis has often been used to explore the implications of different imputation models, we show that the data can be used to choose an appropriate imputation model via conventional model selection tools. We show that BIC can be consistent for selecting the correct imputation model in the presence of missing data. We verify these results empirically through simulation studies, and demonstrate their practicality on two classical missing data examples. An interesting result we saw in simulations was that not only can parameter estimates be biased by misspecifying the imputation model, but also by overfitting the imputation model. This emphasizes the importance of using model selection not just to choose the appropriate type of imputation model, but also to decide on the appropriate level of imputation model complexity.

Indexed as

AlgorithmsBayes TheoremBiasComputer SimulationHumansLikelihood Functionsimputation model selectioninformation criteriamissing data analysisstochastic EM algorithm

Identifiers

PMID33629367
PMCPMC8248419

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.